Before Alex Garland blew our minds with Ex Machina, we already knew he was a force, as he’d been writing great movies long before he started directing them. Now it sounds like his next film—another scifi movie—is on the same track, as three amazing leads have just joined on.

That next film is called Annihilation, based on Jeff VanderMeer’s novel, and he’s cast Oscar-winner Natalie Portman, Jane the Virgin’s Gina Rodriguez and Creed’s Tessa Thompson as a trio of scientists who head to a very weird world.

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In Annihilation, an anthropologist, surveyor and psychologist (played by Portman, Rodriguez and Thompson) are sent to a mysterious place called Area X by a corporation called Southern Reach. It’s an odd, mysterious, almost surrealist landscape that had some alien influence and the scientists are there to investigate.

“This is not tightly adhering to the beats of the novel in the same way [as previous adaptations],”Garland told io9 last year. “It’s a looser adaptation,” although “the basic precepts” are still there. “Let me put it this way: If you saw the film, you’d know what it was based on. I can say that.”

When we spoke we the writer/director, he was already scouting locations with an aim to start shooting in April. With this casting now in place, that schedule seems to on track. Hopefully we’ll see Garland’s latest sci-fi vision sometime in 2017.